Heritage Event: Presidential Faith and Foreign Policy: Are Times Changing?

RYAN MESSMORE: An important issue for us in the
Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society is
helping to improve religious discourse in the political arena. One
component of this discourse centers upon the role of personal faith
in public office-the degree to which religion shapes the political
beliefs, rhetoric, and policy decisions of the president, members
of Congress, and other elected officials.

President Bush has openly acknowledged that his religious
worldview influences his presidency, especially regarding foreign
policy. In particular, he has framed his understanding of the war
on terrorism as a battle between good and evil, and speaks
passionately about America's purpose in the larger world and the
divine gift and calling of freedom. A question arises as to whether
Bush's religiously informed approach to foreign policy is
consistent with the larger American political tradition, or does he
represent an historical aberration?

Dr. Elizabeth Spalding brings helpful clarity and insight to
this question. In a recent article for the Wilson
Quarterly, she compares and contrasts Methodist George W. Bush
with Presbyterian Woodrow Wilson during World War I and Baptist
Harry Truman during the start of the Cold War, drawing important
parallels with the foreign policy challenges facing America
today.

We are honored to have her provide some of this historical
perspective for us today.

Dr. Spalding is Assistant Professor of Government and Director
of the Washington Program at Claremont McKenna College, where she
teaches U.S. foreign policy and American government. The author of
The First Cold Warrior: Harry Truman, Containment, and the
Remaking of Liberal Internationalism, she has contributed to
several volumes on the presidency and U.S. foreign policy and
written for the Wilson Quarterly, Comparative Political
Studies, Presidential Studies Quarterly, The Claremont Review of
Books, and The Weekly Standard. Her Ph.D. in
government and foreign affairs is from the University of
Virginia.

-Ryan
Messmore is William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and a Free
Society in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion and
Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation.

ELIZABETH EDWARDS SPALDING: There is a tendency
to want to separate politics and religion, the two topics that
everyone says we should avoid at family get-togethers if there are
any meaningful disagreements. In America, we have separation of
church and state-and, of course, an ongoing debate about what that
separation entails. But as Harry Truman is reputed to have said,
there are no atheists in foxholes or the Oval Office. When
circumstances are pressing, and decisions have to be made about
life and death, every president has turned to God. They have done
so in different ways, and some have been quieter than others about
it, but all have prayed and trusted in God's guidance and
providence. Nowhere is this clearer than in American foreign
policy, where often the most urgent and threatening circumstances
are found.

It turns out that no matter how high is built the wall between
church and state, between doctrinal belief and formal state action,
we just cannot divide presidents and their faith.

A lot has been said over the years about George W. Bush and how
his Christian-specifically Methodist-faith influences his politics.
Here I will use key historical examples to show that Bush is not
alone in having his faith influence his foreign policy. While his
religion is not determinative of every presidential action he
takes, it is essential to understanding what he says and does.

Truman and the Great Commandment

By way of comparison with Bush, consider Harry Truman-a man of a
different time, political party, and religious denomination. This
is not the only presidential comparison we could make, but it is
perhaps the most striking.

Truman's touchstone was Jesus' life, example, and teachings.
Truman frequently referred to the Beatitudes and the whole of the
Sermon on the Mount. He traced the biblical connections between the
Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, with special
attention to Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Micah, and Joel. All of this led
to Truman's conclusion that we should live by and carry out the
Great Commandment as imparted by Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew,
Mark, and Luke. "If you will read this tenth chapter of Luke," he
said, "you will find out exactly what a good neighbor means. It
means to treat your neighbor as you yourself would like to be
treated. Makes no difference whether he is of another race or
another creed or another color. He is still your neighbor." Truman
thought the restatement of the Great Commandment to love God and
your neighbor as yourself and Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan
applied to both domestic and foreign policy. Does this sound
familiar? Bush has clearly internalized these same teachings and
tried to put into action the Great Commandment and Jesus' bond
between loving God and loving one's neighbor.

A committed Baptist, Harry Truman was also ecumenical. While
fighting in World War I and commanding the predominantly Catholic
Battery D, he wrote to his future wife that "all churches, even the
Roman Catholic can do a man a lot of good. I had a Presbyterian
bringing up, a Baptist education, and Episcopal leanings, so I
reckon I ought to get to heaven somehow, don't you think so?"
Writing in 1936 to wife Bess, he said: "It was a pleasure to hear
of [daughter] Margaret going to the Baptist Sunday school. She
ought to go to one every Sunday-I mean a Sunday school. If a child
is instilled with good morals and taught the value of the precepts
laid down in Exodus 20 and Matthew 5, 6, and 7, there is not much
to worry about in after years. It makes no difference what brand is
on the Sunday school."

President Truman linked his politics and his faith, and nowhere
is this clearer than in the Cold War. In order to fight the
East-West conflict, he oversaw a revolution in American foreign
policy- characterized by policies and institutions such as the
Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, NATO, and the Berlin
airlift-that redefined liberal internationalism and involved the
United States in the world as never before. At the same time,
Truman also tried to unite the world's religions in a spiritual
crusade against Communism; he received strong support from
Catholics and overwhelming resistance from fellow Protestants, and
his effort to formalize a faith-driven international campaign
failed. In 1950, NSC 68-a National Security Council report that is
arguably the most complete statement of America's understanding of
and goals in the Cold War-and the Korean War confirmed for Truman
that, in the end, the East-West struggle would be won or lost on
moral grounds. Again, he endeavored to take the moral high ground
in the Cold War, this time in what he called the Campaign of Truth:
a two-pronged political strategy involving the mass media and the
world's major religions that also coupled the governmental and
private sectors. Once more, he met fierce resistance from
Protestants, and so, with regret, he scaled back his ultimate goal,
while continuing to work with the Catholic Church and expanding
institutions of public diplomacy such as the Voice of America and
the new freedom radios (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty).

From the first day of his presidency, Truman believed that
America had been called to a responsibility, which had been dodged
after World War I, to foster peace in the world. He often explained
that this duty now extended from U.S. participation in the United
Nations to combating the onslaught of worldwide Communism. But only
in the context of freedom, he believed, could man exercise the free
will necessary to the formation of peace and happiness. The
challenge, as Truman understood it, was that the free world faced a
foe which denied that "human freedom is born of the belief that man
is created equal in the image of God and therefore capable of
governing himself."

Truman turned to the prophets to illustrate his understanding of
peace. He cited where Isaiah explained that God would judge among
the nations and rebuke many people, and they would beat their
swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. But then he
quoted the prophet Joel, who seems to make the opposite point.
Truman noted that in Joel, the prophet proclaimed, "Beat your
ploughshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let
the weak say: I am strong." Truman maintained that the passages
were not contradictory: "Which one do you want? It depends on what
the condition is." Joel, Truman explained, was trying to teach the
people that they had to protect their regime if they "expected ever
to have a free government." Different circumstances demanded
different actions, and the prudent leader must determine whether
the time demands plowshares or swords.

Truman also turned to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. In one of his
earliest foreign policy speeches as president, Truman argued that
the Golden Rule should direct international affairs. As he wrote in
1952, "Confusius [sic], Buddah [sic], Moses, our
own Jesus Christ, Mohomet [sic], all preached 'Do as you'd be done
by.' Treat others as you'd be treated." In post-presidential
comments, he emphasized the fifth chapter of St. Matthew and the
Beatitudes and quoted: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall
be called the children of God." Here, he believed, was the
universal wish of all people of goodwill: "That is exactly what we
all want to be. We want to be peacemakers. Not just individually,
but internationally."

But the Cold War both modified and moderated Truman's optimism
about the possibilities of global peace. On the one hand, he
rejected the idealism of those who ignored reality-he may have
preferred plowshares, but he understood the need for swords. Truman
also rejected, on the other hand, that narrow realism which failed
to recognize the moral challenge of Communism. Freedom, justice,
and order emerged in his writings and speeches as the principles
that created the circumstances under which a real and durable peace
might be possible. And of those principles, freedom had to
take root first-and had to be defended first.

Freedom: Basic and Essential

There is a lot of talk now about how George W. Bush throws
around the word freedom. Critics have accused him of embarking on a
crusade for an ill-defined concept. For Bush, as we have seen for
Truman, freedom is political, but it cannot be separated from
faith. Freedom is central, because along with equality it is an
inalienable right. But for Bush, as for Truman, freedom is also
central because it is the necessary precondition for any ethical
action and for any real peace.

So freedom is more than a slogan; it is basic and essential, and
it is important to both individuals and nation-states. When Bush
and Truman based their epic struggles on freedom, they did so
deliberately. This may be clearer with Truman, because of the
nature of Communist totalitarianism and its location in a dominant
regime. But for Bush, too, we can understand his invocation of
freedom if we understand that he takes the extremists of his
time-the jihadis-as seriously as Truman took the Communists, the
extremists of his time.

In this view, the jihadist terrorists act from their religious
beliefs. These beliefs have twisted Islam, as Bush is always quick
to point out. But he does not dispute that the extremists hold
their beliefs- much as Truman did not dispute that Communists
strongly held their beliefs. Also like Truman with respect to the
Cold War, Bush is able to see that he can adhere to his beliefs,
and the extremists to theirs, without making a moral equivalence
between his deeply held beliefs and the jihadis' deeply held
beliefs.

This view runs counter to many in the United States and
elsewhere in the West. There are, of course, many in America who
take religion seriously. But the secular view-which is prevalent
among academics and the mass media-is either to discount or
diminish the religious element in the war on terrorism.

Does Bush discount or diminish political, economic, cultural,
strategic, and other factors? Absolutely not. But in the radical
Islamic world, this means seeing that religion shapes or influences
all the other factors. Can a jihadist terrorist be pragmatic? Sure.
But he will be pragmatic within his religious context. Bush has
identified and described this religious base for the terrorists'
motivations, statements, and actions ever since 9/11.

In this way, circumstances and tactics on the part of the
terrorists may change in the ongoing war on terrorism, but the
primary motivation on the part of the terrorists will not. Osama
Bin Laden and those he has inspired believe in their jihad.

In ways that may not be immediately obvious, religion was also
at the heart of the Cold War. The Soviets totally denied and
negated God. The materialist atheism at the center of Communism
stood in adamant opposition to the Christian worldview of the West.
Truman's take on the East-West conflict grew from his joint
religious and political understanding that the free world was
engaged in a total battle on all levels-spiritual, political,
military, economic, and geographic-with a totalitarian enemy. Bush
sees jihadism as a total perversion of Islam. Like Truman with
respect to the Cold War, he frames the war on terrorism as an epic
struggle between good and evil, in which our enemies are,
literally, evildoers.

If Bush and Truman had been presidents at other times in
American history, would this understanding of the nature of good
and evil have been as important? Maybe, maybe not. The point is
that they were presidents at their particular times- through, dare
we say, the hand of Providence? The demands of the presidency
called something out of each man. Out of Truman, and I would argue
provisionally out of Bush, those demands called much out of
them.

If the fact that Bush expresses and lives by his Christian faith
bothers the hell out of his critics- and it does-they say that he
is twice as guilty because of the sins of hubris, arrogance, and
hypocrisy. By his critics, including many in his own party, Truman
was considered a bulldog upstart who dared try to replace Franklin
Roosevelt. Truman was aware of this criticism, and it was part of
the reason he asked for people's prayers when he became president
after FDR's death. But he also asked for their prayers because he
believed. We have archival access to Truman's daily prayer, which
he said from high school on, and what's striking about it is his
entreaties for humility, understanding, and wisdom. While we don't
know what Bush's daily prayer might be, he has given us plenty of
clues as to what is at the core of his Christian heart: Love your
neighbor as yourself. This approach is in tune with Truman. Does
this disposition make Bush and Truman soft and mushy? No, both have
understood that we might have to beat plowshares into swords, even
though our preference would be to beat swords into plowshares. A
president has to apply his principles in the circumstances he finds
himself and he contributes to. In the case of both men, this means
acting according to political principles that are influenced by
their Christian faith.

Wilson the Chosen Instrument

Against our comparison of Bush and Truman, we must take a moment
to look at the president who cast his shadow over the entire 20th
century and whose influence remains ever-strong in this new 21st
century. Woodrow Wilson is sui generis in terms of having a foreign
policy approach named after him: Wilsonianism. We can use the words
"Trumanesque" or "Reaganesque"-and some do-but Trumanism and
Reaganism don't carry the punch of Wilsonianism. Many are familiar
with the political content of Wilsonianism, but we need to consider
the religious influences. Through his writings and presidency,
Wilson constructed a detailed theology of politics, in which the
individual, the church, society, and the nations of the world were
all properly placed in a progressive global order. The Christian
doctrine for that theology inhered in the Presbyterian covenantal
religious tradition, which Wilson first learned from his father, a
prominent Presbyterian minister. As a result, Wilson's Christianity
is far different from Truman's or Bush's biblical evangelicalism,
in which God is loving and can certainly be providential, but in
which men must still exercise their free will with the hope-not the
guarantee-that they do His will. Wilson's sense of religious
predestination shaped his politics.

Wilson's worldview stressed the primacy of peace as the
fulfillment of progressive history. During World War I, he once
expressed "the confidence I feel that the world is even now upon
the eve of a great consummation," which would result not only in
some sort of international security organization but also in
coercion being put only "to the service of a common order, a common
justice, and a common peace." Wilson based these comments on the
proposition that "[t]he interests of all nations are our own also."
As he famously said in 1917, "There must be, not a balance of
power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an
organized common peace." Wilson knew that he was advocating a
different way of engaging in world politics, but submitted its
principles were both American and "forward looking," "modern," and
"enlightened." By American standards, he was indeed correct to
repudiate realism in international affairs; but his proposed
replacement misread both the principled American alternative to
power politics as well as the emerging political and economic
trends during and after World War I.

In addition to key religious and philosophical differences
between Wilson, on the one hand, and Truman and Bush, on the other,
there are important dissimilarities in terms of personality. A
politician has to be confident. He has to have a thick skin. Truman
and Bush possess these qualities. Wilson, by contrast, went beyond
confidence. His pride and ambition flowed from his conviction that
he, and he alone, was the chosen instrument to do God's will in the
world.

Different Presidents, Common Christianity

A former presidential speechwriter once said, "If you want to
know what [he] really thinks, look at what he says. He believes in
a personal God who answers prayers. He believes that truth is found
in all religions and that all people who pray pray to the same God.
He believes that prayer and faith can allow one to improve one's
own life and save one, not just in the theological sense but in
this world. And he's told us that he does not ask God to tell him
what to do, but asks God for wisdom and judgment and calm." This
speechwriter could have been talking about Harry Truman or George
W. Bush, but not Woodrow Wilson. It is almost incidental that the
speechwriter was speaking of Bush.

None of this is to say that either Truman or Bush is perfect.
And each would be the first to admit that he was a work in progress
and in need of God's grace. But both are Christian-and a similar
type of Christian. In addition to what has already been discussed,
we should point to the basic sense of equality in both men. Unlike
Wilson's belief that divine destiny made him superior to others,
Truman and Bush have never lost sight of their equality to their
fellow men-whether the neighbor is next door, down the road, or
across an ocean. Their common kind of Christianity unites them,
despite their differences in religious denomination, political
party, and historical era.

Several times I've referred to how much of Western society,
especially intellectuals and the mass media, has either diminished
or discounted the role of religion in our epic struggles of foreign
policy. The good news is that some are seeing the light. The
editors of the granddaddy of all U.S. journals on world
politics-Foreign Affairs-must have been chagrined when the
relative newcomer journal, the American Interest, outdid
them in competing fall issues. Foreign Affairs published
one very important article on religion and U.S. foreign policy. The
American Interest, though, ran an entire section on the
topic, including articles on religion's influence on U.S. foreign
policy and on our jihadist foes. This is the kind of pack
intellectual journalism I would like to see more of-with the mass
media, mainstream policy experts, and many more academics soon
taking Bush and the jihadis as seriously as they take each
other.

-Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of
Government and Director of the Washing­ton Program at Claremont
McKenna College.

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President Bush has received criticism for openly expressing hispersonal faith and stressing the reli­gious element in the "waron terror." Bush is not alone in having his faith influence hispresidency. Harry Truman and Woodrow Wilson also linked foreignpolicy to religion.

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